Categories > Anime/Manga > Get Backers > Dark Kiss

3: Hostile, Cry, Shelter, Lost, Trials (5 themes)

by tsutsuji 0 reviews

Five more ficlets for Ban/Akabane, based on prompts at AVillainsLove.

Category: Get Backers - Rating: PG-13 - Genres: Angst,Drama,Romance - Characters: Akabane,Ban - Warnings: [!] - Published: 2007-09-08 - Updated: 2007-09-08 - 1167 words

0Unrated
Dark Kiss
by Tsutsuji
Chapter 3: Hostile, Cry, Shelter, Lost, Trials (themes 8, 10, 11, 13, & 15)

Fandom: GetBackers
Pairing: Ban/Akabane, implied Ban/Ginji
Warnings: yaoi, UST, hints of violence, dark themes. Tiny mention of drug use.

/Disclaimer: GetBackers belongs to Rando Ayamine and Yuya Aoki and their associates, not to me. I make no money from this fic and intend no copyright infringement. /Credits also go to ThinkExist.com for quotations, to ~silpholion for beautiful Akabane fanart, and as always to Amethyst_Hunter for insight into these characters. Also, of course, to AVillainsLove for the themes.

Summary: Ban/Akabane. Love, hate, UST, and sharp, pointy objects. Fifteen themes, fifteen Drabbles of exactly 100 words or multiples thereof.

I said I was going to try for humor. I failed. Seriously - there's some dark stuff ahead! You might not want to read these if you're already in an existentially gloomy mood, which I must have been in when I wrote some of them.
You've been warned.
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"If love is shelter, I'm going to walk in the rain."
(anonymous, from ThinkExist.com)
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8 Hostile:

Dr. Jackal had no vendettas to fulfill, showed no mercy, felt no regret, and he was deadlier than most. This meant that, whenever they fought, Ban didn't feel the need to hold back in the name of mercy or regret, as he did with the others he might have wanted to kill in the past.

Akabane still waited, increasingly patient for the day when Ban would become completely serious in a fight against him. For now, it was enough to feel, occasionally (in bed or battle), the effects of the past that Ban wouldn't let himself release upon anyone else.

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10 Cry, or Tears (I ended up with both):

They learned some surprising things about each other.

Ban already knew that Akabane's definition of having fun didn't necessarily include winning, but he also discovered that, to Akabane, "winning" didn't necessarily mean ending up on top. Even more interestingly, he discovered he could bring tears to Akabane's eyes in a way that wouldn't get him killed.

At the same time Ban had this revelation, Akabane made his own discovery: his present position was unlikely to leave Ban crying for mercy, but Akabane was quite pleased to find that there was at least one sure-fire way to make him scream.


11 Shelter:
(partly inspired by fanart by ~Silpholion at DeviantArt)

/"The grave is still the best shelter against the storms of destiny." /Georg Cristoph Lichtenberg, German physics professor, scientist, 1742-1799.

Akabane never expected or wanted to feel alive again. After his soul died and his blood was altered into a weapon of death, life had become an endless quest to feel anything at all. Nothing he tried (and he'd tried everything from Aphrodite to Zen) gave him any sense of joy, except using his skill for killing.

But the fun of battle was fleeting, the excitement of bringing death was brief, the anticipation of reaching his limits was elusive. All the rest was nothing. That was why he insisted so strenuously that no one interfere with what entertainment he could find.

Detached from human life, Dr. Jackal denied death and its sorrow until both had ceased to exist for him, and now death itself was no more than a gift he gave to others, an end to the suffering that he no longer felt.

Of course, all of that had nothing to do with his obsession with Ban as the one who might finally show him what no one had seen: his ultimate self; and nothing at all to do with the possibility that the same person who showed him this might also give him the same gift in return.


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13 Lost:

"Stop deliberately terrorizing my partner, Jackal!" Ban growled, after Ginji had once again slunk away in terror from Akabane's presence. "You don't really mean it, anyway!" he added as an extra dig.

"It's only natural for me to pick on someone as innocent as Ginji-kun," Akabane protested, "but I've seen you tease him much more mercilessly than I do, Ban-kun! It makes me wonder if his sweet nature troubles you somehow, hm? Perhaps, like a guilty conscience?"

Ban winced.

"For someone who hasn't even got a conscience, Jackal, you seem to know an awful lot about them," he muttered.

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15 Trials:
(A mini-drabble series in four parts.)

/“May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, enough hope to make you happy.”/(traditional)

I. Happiness = Ginji

Dr. Jackal still scared the crap out of him, that was certain.

Ginji could never forget the bright, red "J" carved into the slaughtered bodies he'd seen, or the mad smile on the killer's face afterward. But there were other things he knew he had forgotten, other dead bodies his own eyes had seen that he didn't remember when he was himself again. But because he was himself now, and because he knew in his heart that what was lost could always be found again, and especially because of Ban, Ginji laughed through fear and did his best to forgive.

II. Trials = Ban

Ban often felt like the hero in some old folktale, the fated son who's been given a series of trials to test his strength: reveal the truth to Himiko and protect her from her brother's fate; prevent Raitei from destroying Ginji's true, optimistic self; settle his tab at the Honky Tonk, keep his car out of hock....

He was more than confident of meeting those challenges, however. He was much less certain of succeeding in the new task fate and his own heart had given him: retrieve Akabane's human soul (if it even existed) from the coldest depths of hell.

III. Sorrows = Akabane

Ban never asked, but sometimes Akabane saw him wonder about the blades hidden beneath his skin, and about the scars with which Ban was now so intimately familiar. Sometimes Ban would frown, blue eyes narrowed, as he ran his fingertips over the harsh ridges on Akabane's chest or the marks on his palms and shoulders.

Sometimes, the sadness and anger in Ban's face reminded him that he was once capable of those same emotions - that he had once, in fact, been human.

Those were the only times he longed to draw his blades and kill his lover on the spot.

IV. Hope = Himiko

When Himiko heard about Ban and Akabane, she wished she was surprised. Instead, her old doubts and rage toward Ban came rushing back.

"The worst of the worst finally found each other," she laughed bitterly. "A perfect pair of cold-hearted killers. How appropriate!"

Then she got a job with Akabane, and was shocked to hear him tell a crude, silly joke - until she remembered Ban telling the same joke years ago. Jackal smiled contentedly through the entire transport, even without getting to kill anyone.

Himiko smiled too. "Maybe," she thought, "even the worst of the worst can get better."

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Only two more themes left to go.
^_^
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